Month: June 2008

Pretty is as pretty accessorizes

Caroline loves to get herself dressed in the morning and then go look at herself in my full-length mirror. She’ll admire her hair and her outfit while doing a little dance in the mirror.

Maybe even a little twirl if she’s feeling especially sassy.

So, pretty much every day.

She always tell me how beautiful she looks.

About a week ago, I started telling her that the most important quality is to be pretty on the inside which means to be nice to everyone and considerate of people’s feelings.

It’s a little thing I like to call INSTILLING VALUES.

Yesterday she was looking at herself in the mirror and said, “I AM SO PRETTY, MAMA!”

“Yes you are, baby. But what’s the most important thing you need to be truly pretty?”

“LOTS OF JEWELRY!”

So, yeah. We’re going to keep working on the whole inner beauty lesson.
A vast array of information

I have PMS.

I’m leaving town on Thursday for She Speaks and need to finish getting ready for the trip. The packing alone will be enough to send me into a frenzy.

It was 140 degrees again today. I can’t really think about it or I will start to cry.

My point is that I just have a few things to share.

1. After a very brief period of relief, Caroline has decided once again that she feels very passionate about what she wears every day. Some days she will change clothes repeatedly until I threaten to flush a Polly Pocket down the toilet.

As God is my witness, I had more than one Great Aunt that used to wear this exact outfit. May God rest their souls.

2. P decided to make himself a hotdog for dinner the other night because I was all “Dinner? You want dinner when it’s 185 degrees outside?” He opened the refrigerator drawer to look for the hot dogs only to find that they were buried underneath a plethora of assorted cheese products.

That is eleven different bags of cheese in various shapes and styles.

Only three people live in this house and one of them only eats half a Dino-Nugget and three grapes every few days.

What can I say? I enjoy cheese.

3. Boomama is hosting a before and after thing on her blog. So if you have any home projects you’ve been putting off for two or fifteen years, this is your chance to hold yourself accountable to the internet.

Since I have already completed one home project this summer by painting my bathroom cabinet, I’m going to set my sights pretty low this time. I have to pace myself or I will become known as a “productive” person.

That is the door frame to our master bathroom. It has looked like that since we moved back in after our remodel. FIVE YEARS AGO.

It hasn’t ever been painted because P built it in a hurry and it isn’t up to his strict construction standards. Of course not being painted just highlights the problem.

Anytime I’ve mentioned that I might paint it, which has been at least twice in the last five years, he tells me not to waste my time because he is going to rip it out and redo it.

And I bet he totally will before Caroline leaves for college.

However, I am going to go ahead and paint it, just for fun. It will be quite the commitment as the entire project will probably take upwards of twenty minutes.

4. The new Third Day CD, Revelation, is coming out on July 29th. But, GOOD NEWS! You don’t have to wait until July 29th to hear it. Go here right now and you can listen to the full album as many times as you want between now and June 30th.

So, go! Start listening.

I’m going to start packing for my trip.

And take some Advil for the PMS symptoms.

Have a great day!
The problem with the heat is that it is hot

Yesterday morning I dropped Caroline off at Vacation Bible School. This is the first year she’s been old enough for VBS and I wasn’t sure if she’d like it or not, but we walked in the church and there were bubbles everywhere and music blaring over the speakers. She looked at me and said, “OH, I AM GOING TO LIKE IT HERE!”

She is such a wallflower.

Anyway, after that I had to take my car in to get the windows tinted. P had made an appointment for me at Four Wheel Auto Parts. You know what you don’t see a lot of at places named Four Wheel Auto Parts?

Volvos.

And also women.

Unless you count the pictures of women in bikinis posing by monster trucks in various literature throughout the store.

I know anytime I put my bathing suit on I get the urge to visit a Monster Truck rally.

They asked me how I wanted to get my windows tinted and all I knew to say was “the normal way”. I mean are there other options? Maybe my name cut out in calligraphy across the back window?

I didn’t really care about tinting my windows, but P felt strongly about it. In fact, we couldn’t go anywhere in my car without a discussion of the INTENSE HEAT blasting through the clear windows. According to him, it raised the temperature in the car to equator-like levels.

But, when I picked my car up an hour later, I could tell a noticeable difference.

So when I got out later in the afternoon to go to HEB, I was optimistic that perhaps my car wouldn’t be too hot.

I have never been more wrong.

The digital thermometer read 120 degrees when I started my car.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY DEGREES.

It is the middle of June.

Which means by August I will have to stay indoors twenty-four hours a day in a bathtub filled with ice or someone will die.

Not from the heat, but rather from my rage caused by the heat.

I arrived at HEB in the form of a wilted, sweaty flower. It took every ounce of strength I could muster to drag myself into the store.

Immediately, I made my way to the frozen food section and stood there for a good ten minutes until one of the employees asked me to please get my head out of the frozen vegetables.

I walked down the aisles and picked up the things we needed, including milk and Dreyers’ Loaded Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream. The heat was stressing me out and I needed some relief.

By the time I drove the ten blocks home, the milk had already turned to blue cheese and the ice cream looked like chocolate milk with chunks of peanut butter cups floating around.

I can’t tell you how hard it was to suck those peanut butter cup pieces through a straw.

And as if all that wasn’t enough to bear, after we got home from the store Caroline rediscovered her Baby Born doll that I may or may not have hidden sometime right after Christmas.

She brought it to me to see if I could make it cry real tears like the one in the commercial. Because, yeah, I perform miracles.

I squeezed various appendages trying to make something happen and it finally did.

Baby Born peed all over me.

Some kind of stale, leftover since Christmas pee.

At least it cooled me off.

Needless to say, this is how Baby Born spent the rest of the afternoon.

I’m hoping she’ll escape through the drain.
Nothing says heartache like a song that uses a synthesizer

The other day I was driving down the road and I was actually in the car alone. ALONE. Which means I was able to listen to whatever I wanted as opposed to Chris Tomlin’s “The Happy Song” or Audio Adrenaline’s “Big House”.

Caroline is certain there are no two finer songs ever written and she’s not interested in hearing anything else to test her theory.

Anyway, I was scanning through the stations (By the way, the scan feature is one of the greatest inventions of modern man. I spent seven years driving a Honda CRX that actually required me to TURN THE DIAL to find a radio station. Of course, I also had to roll down the windows to open the doors from the outside, so the radio issue was kind of small potatoes in comparison) and all of a sudden I stopped the scan when I heard the sweet sounds of Bon Jovi belting out “Never Say Goodbye”.

“Remember at the prom that night
You and me we had a fight
But the band they played our favorite song
And I held you in my arms so strong

We danced so close
We danced so slow
And I swore Id never let you go
Together – forever

Never say goodbye, never say goodbye
You and me and my old friends
Hoping it would never end
Never say goodbye, never say goodbye
Holdin on – we got to try
Holdin on to never say goodbye”

Oh, the 80’s. When lyrics really spoke to your soul.

I wore out my Bon Jovi cassette listening to that song. Of course it didn’t help matters that cassette tapes tended to get hung up in the cassette deck mechanism of my Honda CRX.

So, I started thinking about Bon Jovi songs that I loved (“Shot Through the Heart”! “Wanted Dead or Alive”! “You Give Love a Bad Name”! “Living on a Prayer”!) and naturally, this led me to think about songs that will always remind me of high school and high drama.

The number one song on my list?

“Love Bites” by Def Leppard

I am not even ashamed to admit it.

Well, maybe a little but that won’t stop me.

Halfway through my junior year in high school, I started dating a sophomore. I was a cougar before it was cool and before Demi ever even thought about Ashton. Of course, Ashton probably wasn’t born yet.

The point is I started dating this really cute sophomore boy and not just because he was so cute. I mean, I wasn’t that shallow. He also had a decent personality and drove a convertible Porsche.

I’ll let y’all decide which was the bigger selling point.

Of course, truth be told, after taking him to dinner with my dad one night, my dad’s comment was, “Are you kidding?”

So perhaps his personality was lacking something.

We dated throughout the spring semester of my junior year and I invited him to be my date to Junior/Senior prom.

About a week before prom, two things happened. His mama offered me a job teaching swimming lessons in their backyard for the daycare she owned, and I decided I felt bad for this new girl at school who didn’t really know anyone, so I asked her if she and her boyfriend would like to double with J. and me to Junior/Senior prom.

These two events may seem unrelated. However, they are inextricably linked forever in my mind.

We all went to Junior/Senior prom together and had a great time. I had borrowed a dress from my best friend Jodi that came complete with a bubble skirt. How could I not have a good time in a dress with a bubble skirt?

It’s impossible.

I’ve never been exactly sure what happened that night at prom, but two weeks later right after school was out for the summer, J. broke up with me and started dating the new girl that I felt sorry for and invited to double date with us to prom.

I didn’t really feel sorry for her after that.

In fact, I may have drawn some inappropriate sketches by her picture in the yearbook.

To say I was heartbroken doesn’t really sum it up. It’s not every day a girl gets to ride around in a convertible Porsche.

The real problem was that I had already committed to this job that required me to show up in his backyard EVERY DAY at 8 a.m. to teach incontinent children how to swim. And now that he was no longer my boyfriend and was instead the person I wanted to make regret that he ever dumped me for a girl who wore a peach lame’ dress with ridiculously puffy sleeves, I had to put some effort into how I looked.

I had to wear makeup and tease my spiral perm to impossible fullness before heading off to teach swim lessons.

Oh the humanity.

The little ankle-biters would come rolling out of the van at 8:30 in various stages of distress. One little boy never even took his socks off the entire summer. In his mind those tube socks were the only thing standing between him and a certain watery death.

So in spite of all my efforts to look stunning, by the time J. rolled out of bed and wandered into his backyard around 11 a.m., I looked less than stellar. Invariably, he would walk out just as I was holding a child that said, “I NEED TO GO PEE. NEVERMIND. I JUST DID.”

To sum it up, my misery knew no bounds.

There were two things that got me through that summer. One of them was a little three-year-old boy who was some kind of musical redneck prodigy and knew every word to every George Strait song. He would sing them all to me as I pulled him around the pool. To this day I cannot hear “Am I Blue?” or “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” without thinking about that summer.

The other thing that got me through was the song “Love Bites” by Def Leppard. There was a radio with a cassette player out by the pool and I played that song over and over again. DRAMA.

In my mind I hoped that J. could hear the song playing while he sat in his bedroom upstairs and would feel horrible for how he had betrayed me. Although I’m pretty sure he was just up there watching “Predator” for the 200th time.

How appropriate.

What about y’all? Any songs that will always make you think about high school or a bad breakup? Or both?
Edition 32: Fashion Friday (now with beauty tips!)

You know why I love y’all? Because you make me feel less alone.

And even though I’ve never seen another woman at my neighborhood pool wearing a large hat in an attempt to both protect her face and hide her mustache, I now know that there are others out there with my same issues.

I just wish you lived closer so we could start some kind of support group. We could all sit around with our cream bleach on our upper lip and talk about how beauty was so much easier when we were fourteen and only had to worry about what flavor of Bonne Bell to use.

Or if our mamas noticed how much blue eyeshadow we had on as we headed to the mall on Friday night.

I have a million fashion questions to answer in my inbox and, frankly, it is stressing me out. However, I feel that the skincare issue is an important one, so that’s what I’m addressing today.

Plus, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t really seen any great clothes online lately. It’s kind of all the same stuff over and over again. Time to break out the fall fashions just in time for July.

Anyway, my mustache-eliminating regimen is a two-fold process.

1. I have had great success with Loreal’s Revitalift Micro-dermabrasion products. I use it about 2-3 times a week and after a few weeks, my skin looks noticeably better. This product alone helps significantly in reducing the appearance of the brown spots.

However, I am a believer in maximizing your efforts.

Otherwise known as being obsessive-compulsive.

Especially where age spots are concerned.

2. The other product that saved my life and my dignity during the horrible summer of horrendous mustache face was a bleaching cream with 2% hydroquinone. I can’t seem to find the brand that I used, but the key is to look for a product with 2% hydroquinone and use it faithfully twice a day.

It requires time and patience. Neither of which are really my gift.

Also, some people have a reaction to hydroquinone so use it sparingly at first to make sure that your skin can tolerate it and, for the love of everything, don’t use it on the days you do the micro-dermabrasion. It’s more than one face can handle. I don’t want any hate email about how hydroquinone ruined your life, so I’m handing out a warning right here and now.

Remember, I’m not a dermatologist. I just play one on the blog.

The biggest key to project mustache/age spot elimination success is to keep the sun completely off your face. Stock up on heavy-duty sunscreen and wear a big hat.

Speaking of hats, here are a few cute ones that I’ve found to assist me in both style and sun prevention efforts. I wear this hot pink one on an almost daily basis and on the plus side, there is no way the lifeguards won’t see me if I’m drowning.

I also like this one and this cowboy hat.

Here are a few other really cute, practical options.

Or you could always go with this option, but if you do please don’t tell me about it. Just put on your Vans and keep moving.

On another skincare note, I received an email from a reader named Kristi who asked me what kind of foundation I use. She was looking for “something that can take the heat, look flawless (on flawed skin), and be good for my combination, easily prone to adult acne, face” and asked me for recommendations. She’s been using Bare Minerals and isn’t thrilled with the coverage.

I recently switched from Bare Minerals for the same reason. I love how it feels, but wasn’t always satisfied with the coverage. My current foundation is by Laura Mercier and while I like the coverage, it feels too heavy in the summer heat and humidity.

So, do y’all have any good foundation recommendations? What product provides good coverage yet doesn’t feel too heavy? What about tinted moisturizers? Any luck with those?

I promise I’ll actually post about fashion next Friday, but I felt like the beauty issues had to be addressed. After all, fashion comes and goes, but your face is with you forever.

Much like a four-year-old who senses you are on the phone.

Hope y’all have a great Friday!

Oh, and don’t forget to head over to the LifeWay All-Access blog. There’s some good stuff going on over there and I have a new post up today.

**Edited to add: I fixed the link to the hot pink hat. Sorry about that. I was multi-tasking and put up the wrong link.
The suns of my youth

P keeps asking me if I notice a difference driving my car with four new tires. And I’m really trying to feel the difference but, as far as I can tell, it’s not something tangible that instantly improves a situation, like say a great pair of wedge heels.

Even as Caroline walked out to the car this morning, she said, “Those tires don’t look any different”.

Yep.

A whole lot of not different.

But here’s something that’s different. Apparently I turned into an eighty-year-old woman over the winter months.

Over the last six or so years, I have become pretty diligent about keeping sunscreen on my face. Just call it a desperate attempt to make up for an ill spent youth that consisted of days spent getting the perfect tan on my face with no sunscreen.

The 70’s were a kinder, gentler time when people didn’t know words like OZONE or LONG-TERM SUN DAMAGE.

Oh sure, I was on the swim team for much of my childhood and I always wore the requisite zinc oxide smeared across my nose, but that was more for the look. THE COOL SWIMMER LOOK.

I didn’t care if my nose got sunburned and I certainly wasn’t concerned with any reapplication after swimming, I just wanted to look like all the cool older swimmers as we sat and ate our packets of dry Jello gelatin in between races.

Why did we eat Jello gelatin? I can’t remember but I think it involved some theory about providing energy. Or maybe just a sugar high that could fuel a nine-year-old to victory in the 100 meter freestyle. Whatever. ALL THE COOL KIDS DID IT.

Anyway, at some point in my late twenties, it became apparent that my skin had suffered some sun damage. The main thing that concerned me was the fact that it wouldn’t really tan in the sun anymore. It would just turn red and splotchy. HOT LOOK BY THE POOL.

Are you suffering from heat stroke? No, I just fried my skin throughout childhood. This is my consequence.

Then, after Caroline was born almost five years ago, my hormones exploded in the form of melasma, also known as evil mask of pregnancy. The first summer after she was born, in spite of my liberal use of sunscreen, I developed dark, patchy spots in the perfect form of a mustache.

Horror doesn’t begin to describe it.

When I close my eyes, I can still hear my screaming.

Thankfully I managed to micro-dermabrasion and bleach away that bad boy. Otherwise I would currently be wearing a veil over my face for all public outings lest I scare the little children or cause them to think they’re at the circus.

So, these days I wear some heavy-duty sunscreen in addition to various big, floppy hats to provide maximum sun protection. Even though between the hat and the big sunglasses I look like someone’s Aunt Maude having a day at the pool.

I fully expect that Caroline will end up in therapy over the hats her mama wore to the pool throughout her childhood.

While we were in Florida last week I became giddy with all the freedom, threw caution to the wind and played in the ocean for at least an hour without a hat on. My face didn’t burn because I had on my SPF 170, but it did get some sun for the first time in five years.

There are vampires that have seen more daylight than my face.

Anyway, that little moment of indiscretion in the waves came back to haunt me in the form of not one, but TWO age spots. I’d like to say they are freckles, but I’ve never seen a freckle a 1/4 inch in diameter. For that matter, I’ve never seen a freckle that looks like a map of the former Czech Republic.

Needless to say, the micro-dermabrasion has been working overtime since I returned home to the harsh reality of my bathroom mirror with overhead lighting. Also, there has been many a prayer for skincare redemption being lifted to the heavens.

I think at least one of the age spots has faded to the point of looking like it could at least be a distant cousin to a freckle, but I will never make such a grave error again.

So, if you need to find me at the pool just look for Maw-Maw sitting in the shade with a hat that could be mistaken for a satellite dish.